Production Rollout

The final phase of your Windows 2000 project is production rollout. At this point, you have tested all of your designs in the lab and conducted a pilot program to refine your plan and further test your designs. Now you are ready to incrementally deploy Windows 2000 throughout your enterprise. For some companies, the initial pilot project is the first phase of their rollout. Others might remove their pilot project installations and start their production rollout with clean installations.

During the production rollout phase, testing and support activities are still important as iterative cycles of deployment, testing, validation, and support become the primary focus. The new Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Professional infrastructure is formally turned over to the operations and support groups at the deployment complete milestone. Now is the time to conduct a project review. Primary milestones and deployment documents that you might want to consider creating during this phase include:

• Production rollout plan.
• Release plans for Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Professional, or both.
• Operations and support information system (knowledge base, procedures, and processes for performance support, including test results and testing tools).
• Load or image set and installation scripts.
• Documentation repository (hard and electronic copies of all project documents, including deployment notes, are archived).
• Training material for end-users, administrators, helpdesk, and operations staff.
• Project closeout report.
• Disaster recovery plan.

After your deployment is complete and you have prepared your project closeout report for the executive sponsor, you might decide to conduct a project review. You can use a project review to objectively assess the strengths and weaknesses of your entire project and analyze how you could improve on future infrastructure deployments with the knowledge you have gained from hands-on experience.

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